Creator /
Stewart Lee

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"I can [do standup], I can do it really well, actually. I'm so good at it, one of the things that I do, I make it look like I can't do it, but I can. And if you're sitting there, having been brought by friends, thinking I can't do it, the question you have toI've been on stage thousands of times, literallythe question you have to ask yourselves ... is, 'How many times have I been to standup and what kind of acts have you seen?' Maybe four or five times, you haven't seen the right sorts of people, you have no context for me, so—you're not in any position to have an opinion about me. (beat) Good, that's warmed the room up."

—Carpet Remnant World

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Stewart Graham Lee (born 5 April 1968) is a British stand up comedian, writer and director. Early on in his career he wrote material for Spitting Image and Weekending before teaming up with Richard Herring to write material for The Day Today's radio predecessor On The Hour. Lee And Herring later started in their radio sketch showsLionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World (Radio 4) and Fist of Fun (Radio 1) and presented three series of Lee and Herring on Radio 1 which mixed sketches which music chosen by the duo themselves. They later starred in a television version of Fist of Fun and a live Sunday afternoon show called This Morning With Richard Not Judy. Lee then moved away from performing to concentrate on directing shows for fellow comedians The Mighty Boosh and Simon Munnery before co-writing and directing the notorious musical Jerry Springer - The Opera which attracted a prosecution for blasphemy. He then returned to stand-up and, in 2007, was awarded the dubious honour of being the 41st best Stand Up Comedian (which he took as the title of his next tour). He returned to television with Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, a mixture of stand-up and sketches, with three series filmed.

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Stewart Lee's comedy is noted for his extensive use of Deconstruction and Lampshading (to the point where he is likely to lampshade his deconstruction of a piece of lampshading and then deconstruct himself doing so) and his ability to mine over half an hour's comedy from the most mundane of subjects.

He has so far released five stand up DVDs:

Stand-Up Comedian (2005)

90s Comedian (2006)

41st Best Stand Up Ever! (2008)

If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One (2010)

Carpet Remnant World (2012)

He wrote a novel called The Perfect Fool, and a book called How I Escaped My Certain Fate which is a sort of DVD Commentary on his first three DVDs.

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Tropes associated with Stewart Lee

Actually Pretty Funny: Discussed in his book How I Escaped My Certain Fate  The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian. In his commentary on one of his routines, transcribed from a show that took place in Glasgow, he notes that the Scottish in particular tend to have a bit of a persecution complex about themselves and the English, and often look deeply for perceived insults and reasons to be offended, even if they were unintentional or minor. As an English comedian, he admits to initially finding this intimidating before hitting on the strategy of baldly insulting his Scottish audiences to their faces, but in a way that often used facts about Scotland or irritants the Scottish have that are obscure and little-known outside of the country. He gradually found that combination of deliberately pushing their specific buttons and demonstrating that he'd done his homework would actually earn their respect and laughs, even if grudgingly. Specifically, he did this by arguing that legendary Scottish hero William Wallace was gay. Scottish audiences didn't know whether or not to be insulted, and so were amused.

Always Someone Better: Lee describes feeling like this about Ricky Gervais when Ricky Gervais toured his first stand-up show "Animals". Lee describes how he felt incredibly jealous that Gervais was able to take the sort of contentious material that Lee himself used to specialise in and play it to sell out crowds. Lee credits this as being a big push to him to resuming his stand up career.

Dr. Dan Brown: The seventy-two year old man died a painful death on the large green table... it was sad.

Angrish: He broke into this during part of his Top Gear routine, after quoting Jeremy Clarkson's cruel description of then-UK Prime Minister as a "one-eyed Scottish idiot". Veers into Tear Jerker territory before Mood Whiplash sets in:

Now, by all means, make fun of Gordon Brown's policies, make fun of him being Scottish, at a push, if that is amusing to you. But "one-eyed"? Whatever you think of Gordon Brown, right, he lost his sight as a child, he went blind as a child, and ... [pause, sighs] Is that a funny thing to do a joke about, I dunno, he went, he went, he went, he went {stuttering] blind as a child, he's got about 30% vision now, I think, which may be why he didn't cross his t's in that letter to that dead serviceman's mother, mightn't it, yeah? Rather than being a calculated insult to the dead. Might be, blind —I'm not an optician. But if I was the editor of a tabloid newspaper I'd have investigated the blindness. He went blind as a child, and Jeremy Clarkson thinks that is a legit-, a legitimate... [pause, sighs] I dunno. If you've got, if you've got kids, or any sort of, shred, of human empathy, why would you...if you've got kids, and they're ill, or in hospital...every...you, you say to them, "You'll be all right tomorrow," next day, you try and reassure them. And, uh... [pause] But presumably there came a point where Gordon Brown's parents didn't do that any more, 'cause he was blind, and that was that. And Jeremy Clarkson thinks that's a funny thing to do a joke about. [Pause, quietly] Now. Jeremy Clarkson has three daughters. And I hope they all go blind. [shouting] Not one of them in one eye! All of them, in all their eyes! COME ON, IT'S JUST A JOKE! LIKE ON TOP GEAR!"

Ascended Meme: The "[Insert celebrity here] has let himself go" meme is so ubiquitous (check the comments section of anything he's written for the Guardian, the Youtube comments of any of his videos, and under his picture up there) that he regularly riffs on it in his specials and on Comedy Vehicle.

Biting-the-Hand Humor: Lee thought nothing of making fun of BBC Radio 4 comedy on his BBC comedy series, and once wrote a drunken sarcastic riposte to the Foster's Comedy God Poll while drunk on Foster's.

Notably, the "moving to the countryside" bit from season 2 of Comedy Vehicle, most of the "Marriage" episode from season 3, and the part of the "Top Gear" routine where the show's hosts beat a homeless man to death.

...And most infamously, the "vomiting into the gaping anus of Christ" bit from 90's Comedian, which was a self-admitted over-the-top reaction to the ability of religious bigots to suppress free speech.

Breaking the Fourth Wall: A running joke in his TV series had Stewart Lee speaking favourably to his studio audience; and then turn round to the camera and berating the tv audience for not being at a live gig.

Broken Record: Lee's structure often involves a great deal of repetition, but when Creator Breakdown also enters the fray we often see this effect such as with his Travel Lodge rant from Comedy Vehicle or railing against a cider advert from Milder Comedian.

"Just give it to me straight, like a pear cider that's made from 100% pear!"

" My Grandfather built his house out of old discarded poppies...now remember that because I'll be coming back to my Grandfather and, um, his nest of poppies and it'll be, um, extremely satisfying.

He usually structures an entire two hour show around a series of ludicrously convoluted callbacks. His most recent tour, Carpet Remnant World, goes so far as to lampshade this technique, as he repeatedly states that there is no running thread or theme to the show but he is planning a series of callbacks at the end which will give the illusion of a unified whole.

Cannot Tell a Joke: He can, but his on-stage persona is that of a miserable failure, and so he takes great delight in pretending to tell awful jokes, when the comedy really comes from his despair.

He will also frequently tell a joke that is different from his usual style and then berate the audience for liking it, because it was shallow and simple-minded.

Season 2 of Comedy Vehicle drives this home. He's told if he wants a third series he needs to put more jokes in it. So he comes up with 4 jokes, and within the first episode, he tells three of them. They aren't great jokes.

Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: One episode of 'Comedy Vehicle' contained a five minute attack on comedian Franklin Ajaye based purely on the sleeves note of his record, which Lee admitted to never actually having listened to.

Covered in Gunge: In Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, Paul Putner and Cathryn Bradshaw play a middle-aged couple who this happens to, in reference to Lee's comment that while "Channel 4 is like a flood of sewage that comes unbidden into your home whereas E4 is like you constructed a sluice to let it in":

Man: Nothing on Three. [He changes channel. A huge torrent of brown sewage bursts from the TV screen, completely drenching the man and woman. This goes on for a long time. Eventually it dies down and they wipe their faces]

Woman: Try E4. [The man pulls a lever next to the sofa. The picture behind them on the wall flips upward, revealing a giant opening. A huge torrent of sewage pours out of it onto the man and woman, completely drenching them. This goes on for a long time.]

Crazy-Prepared: The opening routine of his fourth DVD 'If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One' has a classic example. Ostensibly he starts by complaining about a piece of officiousness from Caffe Nero refusing to recognise that he has enough stamps on his card for a free coffee. However, the routine would constantly fail because no-one in the audience could see what was wrong with the card (there were three stamps in blue) which made it look as if Lee was complaining about absolutely nothing. However, he would suddenly reveal that this was all a set up by going off stage and coming back on with a huge painted mock-up of the card painted by himself to show the three blue stamps.

Damned by Faint Praise: The premise of 41st Best Standup and frequently worked into other parts of his routine.

Deconstruction: Lee loves to set a joke up or a particular set or style, completely ruin it, then spend the next 20 minutes explaining in detail every aspect of the joke and why it is funny.

Digital Piracy Is Evil: Seemingly played straight when he addresses the audience at home and tells them that illegally downloading his DVDs is like stealing food from his children's mouths... well actually it's getting in the way of saving up so they can buy a nicer house nearer the better schools.

Disposable Sex Worker: He rips into the Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn for displaying this attitude, imagining Littlejohn travelling the UK carving "Prostitute... not someone who works as a prostitute... P.S... I hate women, obviously... and I'm glad when they die. Yours, Richard Littlejohn... cunt" onto the graves of such victims.

"P.S: Not someone who works as a cunt."

Divide and Conquer: He turns this into a stand-up comedy technique by isolating different corners of the audience he's appearing before, identifying one group as being able to get his style of humour, and then repeatedly lambasting the other group for not getting it.

Don't Explain the Joke: Lee's humour often revels in subverting this comedic rule, sometimes deliberately pushing it deliberately to reveal the absurdity of the jokes, other times just to save Daily Mail journalists a long and pointless email correspondence. His book "How I Escaped My Certain Fate" is basically him dissecting his routine and explaining the thought process behind each joke.

Taken to the extreme in "If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One" when he deconstructs an entire satirical routine involving irony; by speaking atrociously about how he wishes Top Gear's Clarkson and Hammond suffer and die horribly, he follows it up by promptly making a forced, poor apology about how he doesn't think that. Cue Lee then looking straight into the camera and explaining the humour and the structure of the joke itself, before mentioning it's a shame to break character but entirely necessary as some Top Gear fans will definitely send him hate mail if he doesn't.

Genre Deconstruction: Reduction ad absurdum is frequently used to highlight the hypocrisy of whomever Lee happens to be railing against. For instance, in Much A-Stew About Nothing, there is a routine in which the anti-immigration argument is taken to its absurd logical conclusion, suggesting that everyone who has ever immigrated to the UK is a foul wastrel merely trying to take our jobs. By the end of the routine, the UK is devoid of human life.

Grammar Nazi: The "Pear Cider" routine ends with him bitterly noting that the thing that really stings about Magners (supposedly) stealing his family's ancient and beloved saying ("Give it to me straight, like a pear cider made of 100% pears") is that in doing so, they changed "pears" to "pear", and removing the plural completely mangles the meaning of the saying by making it seem like the cider is only made from a single pear, rather than multiple pears.

Happily Adopted: Several of his routines touch on how he was adopted at birth. Despite some bitterness he seems relatively relaxed about it.

Hypocritical Humour: From 'How I Escaped My Certain Fate'. "I'm sick of reading on Daily Mail message boards that I am 'one of these foul-mouthed modern comedians' when I am absolutely not. Honestly, who are these cunts?"

In the second series "Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle" he devotes the episode Charity to attacking comedians who only do charity events to make themselves good...while constantly reminding the audience of how many charity events he's done (a number that steadily increases throughout the show).

This is one of Lee's defining characteristics. As Sean O'Hagan put it during an interview: "He operates out in that dangerous hinterland between moral provocation and outright offence, often adopting, as in this instance, the tactics of those he targets in order to highlight their hypocrisy".

Hypocritical Heartwarming: Despite frequently making comedians such as Michael McIntyre the butt of many of his jokes, he has confessed that he often feels the need to come to their defence when non-comedians mock or belittle them around him, on the basis that comedy can be a very hard job and the fact that these comedians are able to make large numbers of people laugh means that they're doing something right and have some talent, even if what they do isn't particularly to his personal taste.

Incredibly Lame Pun: In a routine about interviewing Ang Lee about his making of Hulk, Stewart Lee milks a joke about 'Don't make me Ang Lee. You wouldn't like me when I'm Ang Lee' for all it is worth (finishing with another incredibly lame pun about him going to the dentist at 2.30).

Jerkass with a Heart of Gold: For a comedian whose entire persona is of someone who is unreasonably aggrieved about things that few other people care about, in his book How I Escaped My Certain Fate he is extremely generous to and appreciative of (most) other comedians, especially if he's mocked them (or a parody version of them) for comic purposes. Justified in that his entire act has become about despising meanness and cruelty, while maintaining a self-consciously arrogant, condescending and bad-tempered demeanour.

"Just Joking" Justification: He mercilessly parodies this defence and its frequent use in Top Gear, in a nearly fifteen minute-long routine in which he mocks Richard Hammond and the other Top Gear presenters to the point that he states he wishes Richard Hammond had been decapitated and killed in his famous dragster crash in 2006. He then mock-clumsily follows up the increasingly violent outbursts several times with "it's just a joke, like on Top Gear", demonstrating how lame an excuse this actually is.

Never My Fault: Part of his Stylistic Suck act is to blame the audience for being incapable of understanding his routine rather than consider the potential faults in the material. As one example, in If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for One, he makes an Incredibly Lame Pun regarding a one-legged pirate's response to a children's pirate-themed leisure centre ("The Pirate's Adventure Castle Activity Centre my foot!"), and then proceeds to lecture the audience for about five minutes on why they should have found it funnier as if they wouldn't have got the joke.

Taken to ludicrous lengths during his UKIP rant — after descending into a ramble about the last time things were good was before anything existed:

The old "nothing" times, remember? When there was nothing? Ah, it was brilliant. There was no planets, was there? And there was no suns, was there? No. There was no crime... make of that what you will. You could leave your house unlocked, couldn't you? Cause it didn't exist.

Obligatory Swearing: Deliberately averted in 90s Comedian, the last half hour of which consists of a surreal and outrageous story about Lee stumbling home to his mother's house in the company of Jesus, only to lose control of his stomach contents. This was the infamous "vomiting into the gaping anus of Jesus" routine. The entire routine doesn't contain a single swearword.

Only Sane Man: His main role in This Morning With Richard Not Judy was to play the long-suffering sane man watching in exasperation as Richard Herring increasingly fell down the rabbit hole of yet another eccentric obsession.

Overly Long Gag: He deliberately plays with this in a routine about Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn chiselling misogynistic abuse into the headstones of murdered sex workers, in which much of the tension comes from Lee tapping his mic against the mic stand in imitation of the sound of Littlejohn's chisel.

Invoked with the vandals who changed the name of a town on the signs on the road to the Edinburgh Festival:

"By the tenth 'Shitbottle' sign I had to pull off into a layby in case I crashed"

"You've seen them, the rapping singers..." See Quotes page.

Used, lampshaded and deconstructed in his "Office World Man" routine, in which he describes going to various stores with 'world' (World of Leather, World of Golf etc.) in the title in a desperate attempt to get material by riffing on what it would be like if the world was literally made out of the things the store titles promised. He ends up at an Office World where the owner comes out having undergone many excruciating operations to replace his body parts with various office supplies and stationery in an attempt to thwart him. When Lee points out that he can simply mine the sheer list of things he's done to himself to get humour out of this trope, the Office World Man replies that he's anticipated this and had more operations than would be optimally funny done, banking on Lee being unable to stop himself reciting them all.

Overly Narrow Superlative: On one of his stand-up tours, he billed himself as "Britain's Third Most Rigorously Analytical Comedian".

Pet the Dog: In series 2 of Comedy Vehicle, at the end of a brutal piece mocking Russell Howard for not quitting his comedy career to do full-time charity work, he admitted it was born out of frustration that Howard had raised so much more money for charity than he would ever be able to.

Political Correctness: One of the few comedians to come out in favour of Political Correctness (or at least defend the principles behind it).

Present Company Excluded: Real Life example, when Lee won the City Limits New Act of the Year competition, the judge told him 'Well done, we'll show those Oxbridge wankers like Rob Newman and David Baddiel what real comedy is". The judge then resorted to this trope when Stewart Lee informed him that he too was an Oxbridge graduate.

Quote Mine: Lee frequently subverts this both as a form of Self-Deprecation and as a Take That! against his critics. For example, the posters for his latest show proudly display "A True Artist of Comedy" from The Observer alongside "A Slimepit of Bitterness" from The Daily Mail.

He was delighted that a reviewer scathingly called his tone one of "constant smug condescension" because it meant he could use it on a poster.

Rant-Inducing Slight: Several of his shows build up to a point where, having stretched his "embittered failure" persona throughout the entire evening, he reaches a final indignity which just makes him drop the microphone and start yelling at the audience. often while getting off the stage and wandering through the crowd.

"41st Best Stand-Up Comedian" has him reach this point after describing how the collapse of a potential show on the BBC resulted in him having to deliver a routine of insect-themed jokes to a convention of entomologists for no reason while wearing a large and expensive grasshopper costume.

"If You Prefer A Milder Comedian" involves him furiously snapping after describing how his family's (supposed) ancient and beloved sayingnote "Give it to me straight, like a pear cider made from 100% pears." was co-opted and twisted by an advertising campaign for Magners Pear Cider.

Real Life Writes the Plot: His show '41st Best Stand Up Comedian' was based on the fact that Stewart's mother once raved about a joke told by cabaret entertainer and former TV Quiz show host Tom O'Connor, which she said was better than anything Stewart had done. When he had nearly finished writing the show, he rang his mum to ask for permission to use this in the show...she responded that the comedian she liked wasn't Tom O'Connor but someone she couldn't remember. Rather than abandon the idea, Stew thought that the idea the his own mother thought he wasn't as good as some unknown comedian was so hilarious that he incorporated it into the show.

A section of his website contains all his reviews, including the bad ones. His 2016 book of his selected journalism, Content Provider, has a self-deprecating title and a jacket quote from the conservative UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph: "Stewart Lee is not funny and has nothing to say." After most of the pieces reprinted in the book, he includes a selection of comments from the website of the paper that first printed the article, many of which are along the lines of "This article should never have been written."

Also on his website, several of the pages have a flash animation that pops up quotes from various people criticising his work. This starts with fellow stand-up comics, goes through to newspaper critics, and then works through a truly bewildering amount of negative comments from social media, most of latter basically describing him as a talentless alcoholic hack who's an asshole to everyone he encounters and whose death would be no great loss to humanity.

Speaking Like Totally Teen: His TV routine about rappers: "You know the rappers that they have now, on the top of the pops? And outside the shopping precincts."

Stylistic Suck: One of the modern masters of it in stand-up, as explained by the title quote. He - or the character he plays - frequently fumbles his routines, goes on long tangents, explains the jokes, especially the ones that don't need explaining, storms off stage, and berates his audiences for not appreciating his True Art. All intentional, of course, which is why it works.

Lee even has a special section of his website called Plagiarists' Corner dedicated to various people who have ripped off his material over the years. Considering his humour, it's unsurprisingly an ironic venture, in that most of the material has only passing similarities which get more bizarre as you go through the list.

Tom O'Connor comes in for massive mockery in the 41st Best Stand Up Ever, due to his mother's love of him. He also rips into Channel 4 and E4 whilst simultaneously lampshading how this will stop them buying the routine for distribution.

Subverted later when he discovers that his mother was actually talking about a completely different comedian. Also, Stewart Lee has noted that when he finally listened to Tom O'Connor's routines, he quite enjoyed them.

Taken Up to Eleven in his rant about the countryside from his Comedy Vehicle series; when he mentions the countryside has nothing but has-been celebrities, he mentions that Paddy McGuinness will undoubtedly turn up "with his joke", before moving on and mentioning that the horse in the field he was previously discussing noticed a flyer for McGuinness' appearance, and it responded by slowly killing itself over four hours by sawing it's neck on a barbed wire fence.

Terrible Trio: He thinks that the Top Gear presenters are these, with James May as the leader, Jeremy Clarkson as the fat, bullying henchman and Richard Hammond as the scrawny, sniggering henchman.

Unusual Euphemism: On his 'Much A Stew About Nothing" he somehow manages to turn 'Opened the backdoor to negotiations with the IRA' into a euphemism for anal sex.

The Un-Reveal: The whole point of the "Princess Diana" bit. After talking about his confusion at seeing a life-sized inflatable ET doll among the late princess's memorial tributes, he launches into a ten-minute one-man play explaining why someone might think that was an appropriate gift. ...Only for it to turn out that there's still no logical explanation.

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